Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for providing customer service and more particularly to enhancing and updating customer service agent skillset definitions within a customer relationship management system.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems provide support for customers of a product or service by allowing those users to make requests for service that can include a question posed by the user related to the product or service. For example, a user may log onto or access a CRM system provided by a manufacturer of cellphones and request information related to use of that device and that may include a question such as “How do I adjust the brightness of the display?” Generally speaking, these systems receive requests for service, e.g., in the form of a phone call, web page form, instant message, email, etc., and route the requests to a human agent for addressing the request and providing an answer to the question. In many cases, the agent is selected based on the topic of the question or request and a predefined profile of that agent that includes indications of the agent's skills and/or expertise.
In existing CRM systems, these skillset definitions for each agent are defined when the profile for that agent is initially generated and may be periodically updated to reflect changes in the agent's qualifications. For example, a particular agent's profile may be updated based on an annual or periodic performance evaluation. These updates are made in existing CRM systems by a manager, supervisor, system administrator, or other responsible person manually updating the agent's profile, perhaps through an administration interface of the CRM application. Such manual operations are tedious, time-consuming, error prone, and inefficient. Furthermore, such an approach does not provide a way for the agent to easily take initiative, based on her own interest or goals, to seek and/or request changes to her own skillset. Thus, agents may find themselves pigeonholed into sometimes narrowly defined roles in spite of their own desires. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for enhancing and updating customer service agent skillset definitions.